LADY. There's no need. (Pause.) Have you been blamed for misusing
your gifts?

STRANGER. I've been blamed for everything. In the town I lived in
no one was so hated as I. Lonely I came in and lonely I went out.
If I entered a public place people avoided me. If I wanted to rent
a room, it would be let. The priests laid a ban on me from the
pulpit, teachers from their desks and parents in their homes. The
church committee wanted to take my children from me. Then I
blasphemously shook my fist ... at heaven!

LADY. Why did they hate you so?

STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men
suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I
will help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit
you. And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by
the men. And--worst of all--to the children: do not obey your
parents, if they are unjust. What followed was impossible to
foresee. I found that everyone was against me: rich and poor, men
and women, parents and children. And then came sickness and
poverty, beggary and shame, divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude,
and now. ... Tell me, do you think me mad?

LADY. No.

STRANGER. You must be the only one. But I'm all the more grateful.

LADY (rising). I must leave you now.